Recent reviews by Kilivin

Spoiler Free Review: Dragon's Dogma 2 is a revitalization of the original and breathes a breath of fresh air into the format of the game. Combat is much easier to understand and doesn't feel so clunky. Exploration doesn't feel so punishing and you are motivated to go explore. Finally, the progression of the game is pretty rewarding when you start out on a vocation (class) and suck at first but by the end you feel powerful but not omnipotent by any means.

As for issues, one is the game's story which I'll cover in the spoiler version and the other is as mentioned by many other people, performance. From pop-ins to crashes to low frame rates on a 3000 series nvidia card, 6 core 4.2ghz cpu, and 32gb of RAM - there's clearly some performance problems that need to be seen to. That being said, there are few to no game breaking bugs and the polish on the game world is better than a lot of other AAA titles coming out lately. Is that an excuse? No, but it's a FAR better state of release than, say, cyberpunk 2077 or arguably BG3 even.

Spoiler Review: As for spoilers, the game suffers a bit in the "wow" factor in the story I feel. None of the quests in the game are that memorable, and the main story concludes with a rather meh "Good guy or bad guy" choice that feels unsatisfactory because you kind of don't choose good or evil throughout the whole game. The entire game, you are kind of defacto the "the good guy" and don't get many choices to be a bad guy. Furthermore, the entire game "Feels like" it has 2 acts. Act 1 being getting back your throne and Act 2 defeating the dragon. PSYCH - that's the good guy or bad guy decision at the end of the game. You can be a douche, let people die so you can have a throne that you've been working to THE ENTIRE TIME or fight the dragon. To me, this felt incredibly unsatisfying for a multitude of reasons.

The first being that the game drags you on the same plot line with very little developing discoveries around the map. You do stuff around the first city, then you do even less stuff around the desert city, then bam game's concluded. It's actually an INCREDIBLY short main story, all things considered, and very little effort went into tying the main story to all the different areas on the map as you might expect. I'll use witcher 3 as an example of this. . . You have 3 "main quests" that go from Velen, to Novigrad, to Skellige - the 3 distinctive areas to explore in the main story. This then entices you to do the quests surrounding those areas. In this, they have a whole volcanic island to explore, a huge desert to explore, a huge green area to explore, elven lands to explore, and a misty forest to explore. Yet, you do most of the game in the green area (start), then maybe half or a fourth of that in desert area, then the volcanic area is just 2 boss battles and job's done, game's over.

It was disappointing, to say the least, to find out what I thought was the end of act 1 and felt like the conclusion to "part 1" of the story of you reclaiming your throne was actually just the end of the game. I don't get it, either, because they have so many cool areas they COULD make so many quests in yet they leave them relatively empty of quests for reasons I don't understand? It ends up making the world feel so big yet, inevitably, incredibly and mind bogglingly empty. To take the Witcher 3 example again, it would be as if the entire game of Witcher 3 was in set in Velen and then you're in Novigrad for 5 hours and the game just ends. Suddenly you're just like, wait....what about Skellige? What about the outskirts of novigrad? Did you really just make this huge map for the hell of it?

Do I think this makes the game bad? No. I love souls games, and I think anyone who has played any Dark Souls Game or Elden Ring would feel right at home in this game. The more you come into the game expecting a souls-like experience, the more enjoyable I think you'll find the game. Perhaps it's false marketing, but the trailers don't show this and make the game appear that it's going to be very cinematic heavy and story heavy when it's really not at all. Hell, the trailer spoils one of the 2 bosses of the game (big towering giant man) that you fight back to back with the dragon. It also spoils pretty much every single cinematic the game has!

Mega Spoiler Review: I almost don't want to put this in as a third option in the spoiler review because it is not made very apparent to the player to do this. When you choose to fight the dragon at the end game, you can instead climb over to his heart and use the blade you are given by another Arisen. Doing so throws you into the "unmoored" world which has 1 save and is essentially a NG+ mode where, if you die, you reload to last rested. Furthermore, there's a time limit on your time there...

Is this a good thing? Arguably, no. It pushes the player to ignore combats, ignore exploration, etc all because you're on a time limit. Furthermore, getting hurt feels more punishing because you are given incentive not to rest (time limit). It's weird they'd cut out hours of gameplay and more areas to explore behind what seems like a secret ending. I don't put it in the original spoiler review because the game gives you 2 clear endings and it probably won't be until people look back after fighting the dragon online and be like "Wait waht? I MISSED SOMETHING?!" And MAYBE go back to it....

Final verdict: 7/10 --- If you like Dark Souls style games, you'll feel right at home here.

Cons:

The game needs a few more weeks/months in the oven maybe. I've not seen many bugs, but crashes are frequent enough to be annoying... as fast as the game is to launch and get back at it.
The game needs a difficulty option between Normal and Hard. Normal makes the game INCREDIBLY easy, and hard makes the game somewhat overpowering ( though do-able in a party ). I feel like there's a happy medium between these two difficulties that needs to be explored.

Pros:

The combat is different to HoH which my friends and I played a ton of, but it grew on me pretty quickly. Starting off on Hard mode, it posed a crazy challenge that basically required us to be a team which felt really unique.
All of the classes feel like they play a role in the party, though I think the need for a Paladin is a bit absurd on harder difficulties being the only decent group healer.
The crafting/itemization of everything feels really cool. Seeing that modding is available to this, I'm very curious to see what other people may add to this down the line if that's an option.
The map design is good on the premade stuff. It's a far cry from HoH which was mostly completely randomized dungeons which the "Mysterious Caves" seem to take the place of in this.
The bosses ( so far ) are each unique and fun.

Things I'd love to see:

MODDING! I'm very hyped to see if people can make their own maps and worlds, heck if there was some kind of map editor to do custom scenarios for the public I can see this game really taking off. Player made content will always come at a faster rate than any team can produce, and as a DM of D&D, I'd love to put my own adventure into a scenario for people to play - I think that'd be really special. All of that, of course, hinges on there being a great map editor/scenario editor. . . I'm thinking something like the dev tools from Neverwinter Nights or the Neverwinter MMORPG. Then modders+map makers can combine to make truly unique additions to the game.
NG+ and NG++ etc modes! The added challenge and endless reward cycle of playing your favorite class to new game + modes and adding variety to those NG+ modes would be cool. I may have foot in mouth syndrome here, have yet to beat the game but given that the level cap is 50 - I don't imagine it's AS endless as HoH was.

Quick Review - A great game to go through without save scamming for a true d&d experience. Definitely recommend playing on tactician though because it's pretty easy as crpgs go.

Long review -

Pros
- The game is gorgeous if you have the PC to accommodate.
- The companions have very interesting backgrounds that are very well explored throughout the game.
- the main plot is a 10 out of 10 if you are a fan of the forgotten realms.
- the choices you make MATTER!!! I cannot stress enough how important it is to not save scum for the "best outcome"... sometimes failure can lead to moving emotional scenes that will be uniquely YOURS.
- AMAZING and fun breadth of magic items that are fun and interesting. It goes without saying, a smart 5e master can gimp their party easily with such fancy magic items.
- tons of replayability. Obviously being good or evil is a major decision, but there are stuff to miss in this game you should feel happy to miss so you'll see for the next playthrough.
- lots of content! There is a huge amount of content here, and as soon as you think it's about done it just keeps going and going.

Cons
- lag issues, stuttering, and glitches. There is only 1 glitch that you'll probably run into that takes away your UI that I found and heard is a problem...just quicksave and quickload and it fixes it. Lag and stuttering can happen to anyone, not sure why as I have a very powerful rig and running on max settings... there's a good video online to go through to fix this and it made the game run smooth as butter after that (in other words if you get lag..it's fixable).
- lack of epic scenes. This may be because I'm coming off the back of wrath of the righteous, but there aren't very many cut scenes with much wow factor for me. When they do happen, it definitely hits home - I just wish of the 170 hours of cinematics it wouldn't be as much back and forth camera dialogs.
- A bit too horny for my taste. This is just an opinion, but as a DM of over a decade and player for almost 2 of d&d... sex and d&d just never go great together to me. A lot of it feels like a creepy DM who is getting off on showcasing their many varied intimate interests. I played the game through with my wife so...every single character hitting on ours just felt very cringey. At the very least, contrary to the divinity games - I don't recommend this game to play with your partner cause of how horny the companions are.
- romances are far too easy. From every crpg and rpg I've played, I've never had a romance or multiple romance option be as easy as this game. It makes the whole process fairly unrewarded.
- Too easy. Again, if you have crpg experience, this game is a cake walk. The amount of cheesy tactics you can do makes for a trivial experience which could upset people off the back of the recent ish pathfinder and pillars of eternity games.
- money is meaningless. Larian games have always had this issue I feel. The desire to make the cool magic item one you find rather than one you pay to craft or purchase is a design decision...but it makes gold meaningless pretty quickly.

Rating 8.5/10 - Final note: RPG bear sex

Got it for the fallout gameplay style.
Kept playing it for the amazing setting, storytelling, dialogue, and characters.

Outward provides players with a unique RPG Survival that correctly blends the 2 genres without being too overbearing in either. The RPG elements are monetary, and the survival elements have enough depth but aren't too in your face or difficult to get used to. To get a good idea of the game I'll split it into 2 parts - Survival & RPG.

Survival -
You need to sleep, drink, and eat - sure... but when food & drink provide things like boosts to mana or health or curing afflictions you have it makes worrying about food/drink not a massive chore. There are plenty of recipes for food in the game, and you'll very quickly get lost in wanting to have the very best dish & tea active in any tough dungeon. You also need sleep! Sleep has 3 options whenever you choose to sleep... Sleep which restores burnt health & stamina (when you die/get wounded your max hp/stam is reduced), and it also gives you a boost to warmth. There is mana in the game, which is reduced whenever you sleep in contrast - making being a caster come at quite the cost without a large amount of tea/mana potions (Both come in quite ample supply). Also when you sleep you can repair your gear that is equipped, which is kind of mandatory to avoid the 50silver repair fees at blacksmiths! Finally, you can guard when you sleep - reducing the chance of ambush in the night. When playing with a companion (highly recommended to play this 2 player), the other member of the party can reduce ambush while you sleep/repair.. or visa versa!

RPG -
The RPG elements in this game are mostly limited to money and acquiring the most money you possibly can hold! This makes having a good backpack to carry loot a necessity, and it means that you're going to feel the need to hold every item ( so expect a lot of return trips to sell ). There are no fast travel systems in the game, so there's a lot of walking from place to place. However, given the survival aspects - it allows for you to acquire herbs, food, and other crafting materials between each adventure location.

Quests in the game are EXTREMELY vague as to how to do them. Without a GPS of your character on the map, or a quest marker of where to go - you're going to find yourself using a word document or writing down directions and details of quests in real life (A feature some may be turned off by, but it really pulls you into the game if you have the attention span for it).

Progression in the game is very skill based and not done via XP. You buy skills from trainers and have skill points to unlock special abilities later on the game. The biggest form of progression in the game comes from skills, but your gear plays a huge role as well... The difference in a machete and legion sword is very noticeable, not to mention having good armor or being really good at dodging/blocking will reduce how many healing potions you're going to burn through.

Overall the game is a 9/10 in my book - The only thing the game really lacks is a cinematic quality to it, which is very understandable given the small development team. It also has to be said that a lot of modern RPGs tend to bend too heavily into the cinematic nature of an RPG and ignore the mechanics/gameplay that people will be doing far more of in your game. Where games like Witcher 3 blended these two qualities very well, a lot of RPGs don't even make the attempt, or lean too far in a cinematic direction as if they would rather be making a movie or TV show. Let this kind of game be lesson to any AAA RPG developers to focus on the "feeling" of an RPG.

The game expands on both the lore of Warhammer as well as granting you many new enemies to face along with MANY new weapon & class options. Wonderful game.

Kingdom Come Deliverance is a myriad of problems, but I had hoped that the main story had some sense to avoid said problems. Alas, after losing roughly 16 hours of gameplay due to needing to reload older saves from bugged quests (among other bugs). . the main story is.. well.. rather meh.

TL;DR -

CONS:
The game is horribly buggy in its current state. WAIT TO BUY!!!
Stealth, lockpicking, and pickpocketing are cool in concept - but they are executed very poorly. To the degree that lockpicking is supposedly being reworked by the devs.
Side quests bug out the game often, but more than that they are rather unsatisfying. This might just be because Witcher 3 predated this game where side quests were just as enthralling as the main story. . this? I don't want to spend 3 hours telling some pagan to leave a town.
Fast travel interruptions are repetitive and meaningless. At first I thought having stuff show up on the road when fast traveling was genious. Eventually, it really just turns into a cash grab method. . . and OMG FAINT HEARTED KNIGHT GO AWAY.
Power-curve extreme. I haven't seen this much power curve since Oblivion with reflection armor. As soon as you handle a couple bandit camps and train with Sir Bernard, you are basically unstoppable.

PROS:

The game's quests boast a very competent AI system. Don't do your chores in time? QUEST FAILED. I love that. It gave me a sense of urgency in the game that a lot of games lack.
Combat in the game is superb when facing large or small groups. This is honestly the best part of the game.
The main story is fantastic BUT. . . extremely anti-climactic. Still, it is super fun while it lasts. The quests in it are the most memorable I've seen in a long time.
The Nourishment & Energy requirements are very refreshing to see in a game. The massochist in me makes me wish they'd add a defecate and pissing element to the game with all the outhouses and such around. Granted, once you get Troubadour you can bang wenches to get 100 energy and 100 nourishment .. somehow? .. so this pro doesn't last very long sadly.
The game is INSANELY immersive. The lack of loading screens in almost everything you do makes you play for as long as you have time. The first time I got on I couldn't get off for 8 hours!
The game's graphics is extraordinary. This might be in part to their lack of fantastical elements to the game (which is a relief). They didn't need to focus on variety. Therefore, walking through a forest or town, etc is breathtaking.

SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE INVOLVES ELEMENTS OF THE MAIN STORY.
SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE INVOLVES ELEMENTS OF THE MAIN STORY.
SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE INVOLVES ELEMENTS OF THE MAIN STORY.
SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE INVOLVES ELEMENTS OF THE MAIN STORY.
SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE INVOLVES ELEMENTS OF THE MAIN STORY.
SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE INVOLVES ELEMENTS OF THE MAIN STORY.
SPOILER WARNING FROM HERE INVOLVES ELEMENTS OF THE MAIN STORY.

Obviously this is spoiler territory and I still recommend people to play this game. However, I would highly recommend waiting for the OBVIOUS DLC that MUST be in the game otherwise this will be a bigger disaster than Divinity.

You start your quest as a basic ♥♥♥♥♥ blacksmith boy, or Quad B for short. Quad B (AKA Henry) lives a simple life that is ruined by Sigismund in his quest to restore order to Bohemia. This is at the hands of Cumans, mercenary barbarians that are fit to raze Skalitz, Quad B's home. So they do.. and there is little resistance. Sadly, your parents die to Sigismund's right hand man, Markvart Von Aulitz!

So. . ok. . they spend some 7 hours setting up the MAIN VILLAIN who killed your mother and father. Then at the end of that they give you another villain, Runt. Villains then = Runt, Markvart Von Aulitz, Sigismund. Yet, the main villain of the game is some other schmuck you meet towards the end? . . Oh, and the main story saying to get revenge on Markvart Von Aulitz isn't actually completable? EH! If they had focused 100% on getting the sword back, that's one thing - but you don't even get that.

In simple terms: The game's story is misleading. Quad B becomes a badass fighter who, at lvl 20, can slaughter entire towns without difficulty. Yet, you can't get the sword you lost back. . and the dude who is your "Sworn enemy" doesn't face off with Quad B? UNSATISFYING. The only satisfying part of the prologue is when you see your "father" and mother. $60 should give you a complete story, beginning middle and end. This has a beginning ( a great one ), but it cuts off during the middle.

I just want this game to be at Overwhelmingly Positive reviews. It deserves that and more.

After dunking 100+ hours into the first game, I have adored this series ever since. Divinity 2 also adds way more new class options, new race options, and more than the 1st game did. . and to be honest, I would have even accepted the 2nd game just being a graphical upgrade. But no, Larian Studios loves their fans and I would equate them to as good a gaming company as CDProjekt Red with how much they give to their fans.

After playing through this a few times, I'm looking forward to playing through this one with my gf and other D&D friends. Keep up the AMAZING work Larian Studios!

RATING - 8.5/10
One of the best 2D action-filled, creative, and progressive games. From exploring underground caverns, to evil dungeons, to the very depths of hell (and walls of bacon), this game never fails to keep you on your toes and begging for more!

Pros:
Wonderful progression system based around armor (and later on what type of character you prefer playing. Warrior, Mage, or Archer).
An extensive list of different accessories, weapons, and armor that will make any completionist want a manequin of every set in the game.
Action packed with over a dozen different bosses and three times that for different monsters.
Creative reign over the world's difficulty. On softcore, You drop a portion of your money on death. Mediumcore, You drop everything on death. Hardcore, You die for good. . . but you get to float around your world as a ghost.
Now has seasonal "events" which will change your world around a bit in terms of dropped items, and adds hard mode events as well!
The game will always keep you on your toes, and is loads of fun with friends as well as solo.

Cons:
While the game keeps you on your toes, it's also hard! It's recommended to play Softcore until you really get the hang of it. NOTE: Some people might like/dislike hard games so this isn't a major con.
Will keep new players on the wiki quite a lot. While the game has a guide built in for crafting, he doesn't help too much in terms of direction and how certain mechanics work and where to go.
Similarly on how the guide doesn't give much direction, much of someone's errors in the game will be unavoidable just because you won't know how something worked in the first place. I can't tell you how many times I died just running straight into the dungeon at first before "certain things" were achieved.
No built in creative mode for the more buildy type peoples (like me).

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Overall, it's a wonderful game. Not to mention the amount of multiplayer pvp game modes and goof offs you could make are endless with how many different weapons & armor (and costumes) there are in the game. If you are into getting ripped apart by derplings, slaying harpies & wyverns with your laser rifle, or just building amazing works of 2D art (as people have), Terraria is for you!